Tech-facilitated abuse perpetration: A research collaboration with the Gender and Tech Lab at UCL
Addressing technology-facilitated abuse to protect victims and survivors of intimate partner violence.
''Addressing tech abuse does not require anyone to be a tech expert. It requires us to understand how perpetrators misuse everyday technologies, to equip frontline practitioners with the right questions and tools, and to ensure that responsibility for preventing harm is placed on those causing it, not on victims and survivors.”
Dr Leonie Tanzcer
Since 2018, Respect has been working with the Gender and Tech Lab at University College London’s Department of Computer Science on research looking into addressing technology-facilitated abuse to protect victims and survivors of intimate partner violence.
Respect is a key collaborator and sits on the project Advisory Board, which focuses on studying tech abuse perpetrators and aims to use its findings to:
- Improve the design of digital technologies
- Influence national and international policy making to future-proof policy
- Understand and address this new level of risk in the landscape of domestic abuse perpetration
The overall aim is to establish foundations and methods to stop perpetrators using this form of abuse, and shift responsibility for reducing harm away from the victims.
As part of this ongoing research, Dr Leonie Tanzcer and Dr Nikos Koukopoulos from the Gender and Tech Lab have been working with Respect-accredited services, The London Borough of Redbridge, Threshold DAS, Inspire North, and Cranstoun to explore the methods being used in perpetrator interventions to ensure that the role of tech abuse is mitigated.
“Given the rapidly increasing presence of technology within patterns of coercive
control, it is paramount that perpetrator programmes take this
into account intheir design and delivery.”
Dr. Nikos Koukopoulos
We caught up with Leonie and Nikos on how this work is going.
Technology-facilitated abuse: working with perpetrators.
This new online training course is designed for specialist domestic abuse practitioners to support them to understand and address technology-facilitated domestic abuse through evidence-based interventions.
Next date: 25th June 2026
